David Singer: Balfour Declaration and Mandate for Palestine Still Keys to Peace

The Balfour Declaration (“Declaration) issued on 2 November 1917 and the Mandate for Palestine (“Mandate”) issued on 24 July 1922 still remain the keys to resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict.

The Declaration’s call to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine was historic:

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

Whilst not binding in international law – that was to be reversed when the Declaration was included in the Mandate’s preamble and unanimously adopted by the League of Nations:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country;

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine;

The Principal Allied Powers were The British Empire, France, Italy and Japan.

The boundaries of Palestine fixed by them encompassed what is today called Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Jordan (then called Transjordan).

Under article 25 of the Mandate - the Mandatory was entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of the Mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions.

On 23 September 1922 the League of Nations Secretary-General communicated for the information of the Members of the League, a memorandum relating to Article 25 of the Palestine Mandate presented by the British Government to the Council of the League on September 16th, 1922 (“Memorandum”) and approved by the Council.

The Memorandum excluded Transjordan (78% of the territory of Palestine) as a future potential area in Palestine for reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

The United Nations continuing failure to faithfully implement these League of Nations decisions remains the biggest stumbling block to ending the Jewish-Arab conflict.

The two-state solution contemplated by the League of Nations in 1922 – Israel and Jordan within such final borders as they agree – remains the only viable two-state solution in 2019.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

Yes, Virginia, There is a Famous Belgian ...

... Or, rather, an infamous one.

His name's Christoph D'Haese.  He's Burgomeester (mayor) of the Belgian city of Aalst in old East Flanders, and a member of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, which, being translated, means New Flemish Alliance.

Once upon a time, in another city in what is now Belgium, live cats were thrown from a belfry tower to their deaths on a carnival day held during Lent.  That vile barbarism, a product of the Middle Ages, apparently persisted until 1817.

In Aalst during Lent there is also a carnival day.  

No, they don't sacrifice cats. 

But they do sacrifice all pretensions to human decency by (would you believe this, post-Shoah!?) including hideous depictions of Jews in the carnival parade, depictions that would do credit to Julius Streicher and the rest of the Nazi fiends were those monsters still alive. 

Here's how a senior American academic, Eliot A, Cohen, calling it out for the antisemitism that it is, described the obnoxious spectacle from last year:

"On Sunday, a float rolled down the streets of Aalst, a Belgian town, for carnival. It featured two grotesque caricatures of Hasidic Jews, hooked noses, hands reaching out for money, and a rat sitting on money bags. That’s 2019. A second float ... —in Marburg, Germany, in 1936—featured celebrants dressed as Orthodox Jews. The only real difference is that the former was more elaborately and professionally executed, and if anything more grotesque."

[Photos of the two floats at source]

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTNO2KKNtJk

 To quote The Independent newspaper at the time:

 'A carnival parade which featured Jewish caricatures standing amid piles of money has been compared to Nazi antisemitic propaganda and provoked fierce criticism in Belgium. One float in the city of Aalst’s annual feast on Sunday was decorated with two huge figures of men with large sideburns, crooked noses and wearing shtreimels, a fur hat worn by some Orthodox Jews. One had a rat on his shoulder.

It was followed by several trucks on which dozens of dancing people wore similar outfits....

“The caricatures, like those of Der Stürmer, of Jews with a crooked nose and suitcases, are typical of the Nazism of 1939,” a spokesperson for Belgium’s Forum of Jewish Organisations said. ”This has no place in 2019, carnival or not. The Jewish community naturally accepts humour is very important in a society, but there are limits that cannot be exceeded.” ....

[T]he Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium called on organisers to condemn the float. 

“At best it is a lack of discernment, especially given the rising context of antisemitism in our country and in the world,” a spokesperson said. “At worst, it is the reproduction of antisemitic caricatures worthy of the Nazi era.“We will contact the organisers and the competent authorities to join our denunciation of these acts for the coming years.”

The European Commission, meanwhile – which is headquartered just 20 miles from Aalst in Brussels – called on the Belgian authorities to take action....'

As reported there, and more fully here,  the group responsible for the antisemitic depictions were unapologetic, and Christoph D’Haese was quoted as saying the group “had no offensive intentions”.

Now, ahead of next year's Aalst carnival, as reported here, the group

'have published 150 caricatures mocking Jews ahead of the 2020 event.The caricatures, some featuring Orthodox Jews with red, hooked noses and golden teeth, were printed on ribbons intended for participants in the annual event, which was added in 2010 to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO....

One caricature shows a red-headed Orthodox Jew with golden teeth and is captioned: “UNESCO, what a joke.”

Hans Knoop, spokesperson for the Forum on Jewish Organizations of Belgium’s Flemish Region, called the 2020 caricatures “pure provocation” and a “manifestation of anti-Semitism.” ...'

And the Burgomeester?  Well, his fame, or rather his infamy, for tolerating, may, for not only tilerating but excusing these antisemitic manifestations, is spreading.  Is it any wonder, Virginia, that on social media he is attracting such robust condemnations as these?

The Danger & Derangement of Social Justice Warriorism & "Intersectionality"

 As the conservative columnist Janet Albrechtsen remarks at the beginning of an article in the current issue of The Weekend Australian

"There is growing concern across the West that a new form of totalitarianism is on the march.  Not the jackboot, storm-trooping, Stasi-interrogating kind from the communist era. Ours is softer totalitarianism. It stifles speech, no-platforms people with different views, disfigures great works of literature to meet modern sensibilities, kills comedy to protect feelings, restrains writers from stepping into the shoes of others, thinks diversity in public broadcasting means putting people with different skin colour on TV, rejects an exquisite painting from past centuries because an artist lived by different norms, shames dissenters, sacks scientists, and depicts Western civilisation as a shameful story of colonial aggression, white privilege and rotten patriarchy.  This new, poorly named “progressive” project premised on the virtues of diversity, tolerance and justice is proving anything but diverse, tolerant and just..."

In the following video there are so many pearls of wisdom that I soon gave up attempting to itemise them.

Please listen to the wonderfully courageous and prescient Brexiteer Douglas Murray giving, this past June, a fascinating long interview to the admirable Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution on the whacky and worrying political and societal developments that prompted his books The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017) and the more recent The Madness of Crowds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQXHc-tJMXM

When Stuart Met Anne-Marie

Much anger and indignation by Aussie feministas about a nasty misogynistic chant by teenage students from a prestigious Catholic boys' school last week as they travelled to an athletics event on public transport.  Yes, the boys' behaviour on the tram was intimidatory and despicable, and, yes, it's deserved all the adverse publicity and condemnation it has garnered.

The school's head was swift to issue a robust denunciation of the boys and to suspend the miscreants (not robust enough for some critics). Among those outraged women (and some men) baying for the closure of boys' private schools on the grounds they produce the next generation of male-privileged captains of industry who discriminate against women in the workplace and, more generally, harbour contempt for and violence against women, are leftist ABC and class warfare types who studiously avoid mentioning, far less condemning, Islamic and ethnic minority misogyny.

In the Australian conservative magazine Quadrant online, meanwhile, a retired Australian judge, Stuart Lindsay,  who lunched with her in London recently avows his admiration for the feisty Dublin-born British political activist Anne-Marie Waters, founder of Sharia Watch UK, who made a failed bid fir the UKIP leadership and is much maligned by the politically correct and the lily-livered.

Not for Anne-Marie the double standards of the Sistahood, whether here or in America.

Having spent an afternoon in her company, the judge, invoking a line from the famous speech before Agincourt in Shakespeare's Henry V, reflected that "She shouldn’t be doing this on her own. Englishmen must really hold their manhoods cheap after all."

Inter alia, in the judge's own words [emphasis added]:

'.... The charge whispered against Anne Marie during that UKIP election, and which [Nigel]Farage repeated publicly many times, was that she was a “racist”. The evidence for this was her relentlessly articulated belief that Islam constituted the gravest threat to the survival of Britain. But telling the truth can never be racist. And Islam is an ideology, not a race....

 " Stuart, I spent years being a Labour activist in London, standing for elections, writing their speeches and campaigning for them. I know who these people are. I know they have no principles. I know how corrupt they are,” Anne Marie explains. “They ignore violence and suppression of women by Islam because they depend on Muslim community leaders backing them.”

The apotheosis of this corruption for her was the capitulation by regulatory authorities to halal butchery of animals in the UK....

“It’s the power that this religion has in our country now. The government won’t challenge them. There are too many votes. And people are scared. They are terrified of what will happen to them if they speak up and insist that our laws are enforced.”....

[A] socialist EU has directly facilitated Islam’s rapid expansion within the nation-state. Women and girls are measurably much less safe in Britain because of it. Islam in concert with other identitarian impulses is responsible for the invention of “hate speech” and other gross disfigurements of our heritage of free expression. Her confrontation with Islam was natural and inevitable and would have been so for millions of other liberals in the West but for the ravages of political correctness. 

.... I liked her and found myself telling her I liked her. I also told her that I thought British men should feel ashamed that it was a woman, and an Irish woman at that, who was putting up the most effective fight against the enemies within.

She accepted that comradely remark in the spirit in which it was made. I could see hers was not a feminism of the modern kind, obsessed with chivalry-policing. I seem to remember that over the afternoon she used the word feminist about herself but it doesn’t matter if she did or didn’t. She cares that women are being harmed and that we are permitting medievalist mistreatment of them in our heartlands and she has determined to put it to an end....'

Read it all here

"What’s Wrong with anti-Zionism is anti-Zionism itself"

"Long ago, August Bebel gave a name to left-wing anti-Semitism: “the socialism of fools.” , Emeritus Professor Michael Walzer, of Princeton, reminded us back in March, adding,  "Now the fools are in Congress".

His focus, no prizes for guessing, was on Representative Ilhan Omar, and he wrote, inter alia:

"A congressional resolution condemning all forms of bigotry is no doubt commendable, but it doesn’t serve our political purpose. What is necessary is a fierce and detailed expose of all the lies about the Jews. And it is important that the word be used: lies. Many of Omar’s critics prefer to be offended, hurt, and distressed by her repetition of anti-Semitic tropes rather than outraged by the dishonesty of the tropes.

 And they are, in turn, afraid to offend Omar’s supporters, who seem to think that the lies Omar repeats are simply her opinions; they are just like everyone else’s opinions. Indeed, Omar is entitled to her falsehoods; it is, as we say, a free country. But the falsehoods have to be given their proper name. If Jewish Democrats don’t get tough about this, they will soon find themselves unable to be tough about anything. They will be pushed out of the Democratic Party just as Jews are being pushed out of the Labour Party in the U.K."

That article was in The Tablet here.

Now, in the Fall 2019 issue of Dissent magazine, Professor Walzer wows with an article entitled "Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism".  A taster, in his summing up:

 "Why not Zionism? Because the Jews aren’t a people; because they should be more cosmopolitan than anyone else; because the Zionist state has had some terrible governments; because no one should have a state (even if almost everyone does). Each of these claims can be made and reasons given, but the way they are made in the world today is bound to arouse suspicion. It is at least possible, and sometimes it seems likely, that the people making them also believe that Jews ran the slave trade, that the Zionist lobby controls U.S. foreign policy (as Representative Ilhan Omar has said), that Jews are disloyal to every country in which they live except Israel, and that Jewish bankers control the international financial system.

 There are too many men and women who believe these things—on the left as well as on the right. They are anti-Semites or fellow travelers of anti-Semites, and their anti-Zionism is probably tightly connected to their anti-Semitism (though there are now pro-Israel anti-Semites among, for example, American evangelicals and Eastern European right-wing nationalists).

Men and women on the left need to be sharply critical, especially critical, of other leftists who hold these views. It is obviously easier to condemn right-wing anti-Semites and pretend that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist on the left. But it does ...  It may well be true that right-wing anti-Semitism poses the greater danger to Jewish well-being, but the leftist version should not be underestimated.

Still, I am sure that a lot of anti-Zionists and many leftist anti-Zionists don’t believe any of the anti-Semitic fables. Maybe they are willfully ignorant about the Jewish people, maybe they are peculiarly focused on the Jewish state; maybe they just don’t like Jews (as George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said about Jeremy Corbyn). Maybe. But when it comes to leftist debates about Israel, Zionism is the issue, and it is Zionism that we should talk about. For all the reasons I’ve given, what’s wrong with anti-Zionism is anti-Zionism itself..."

Read the entire article here

David Singer: Vote Recount Could Possibly End Israel’s Electoral Morass

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israel’s President Rivlin is due to make a decision on October 24 on whether to extend for another 14 days the mandate he granted to Benjamin Netanyahu to form Israel’s next Government.

Reports that Rivlin will not give Netanyahu that 14 days extension – even if requested by Netanyahu – seems counterproductive to doing everything possible to avoid a third election within 12 months.

The President should also take advantage of that 14 day period to order a recount of votes to answer a query that the September election results have thrown up – which is encapsulated in this email I sent to the Central Elections Committee on 29 September:

“I would be pleased if you could give me an explanation to my following comment relating to the final count in the September 2019 elections:

•  There was an increase of 127,536 in the number of eligible votes cast from 4,309,270 in April 2019 to 4,436,806 in September. Yet there was an increase of 133,103 alone just in the Joint List vote (470211) over the Hadash-Tal and Ram-Balad vote (337108) in April.

Thank you for helping me to understand how this could occur.”

The April election results were mired in confusion due to a bug in the Central Elections Committee website.  The displayed data indicated for several hours that the New Right party was just above the threshold with 3.26%, but officials said that was a mistake.

The officials said the bug on the site meant that it was not showing accurate numbers for total votes counted, and was thus displaying inaccurate figures for all parties. This was rectified.

Could this same mistake have happened again in September and not have been rectified?

I have not yet received a reply to my request.

The distribution of Knesset seats is very complicated and the summary issued by the Central Committee needs to be amplified and explained.

Allowing Netanyahu another 14 days would, therefore, seem to be in the national interest from everyone’s standpoint – especially if Netanyahu requests it. 

Calling on Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to try and form a Government can wait another 14 days – given that Netanyahu’s bloc has a clear electoral majority over the Ganz bloc – 1,973,246 votes to 1,556,491 votes.

President Trump – like bemused Israeli voters – is frustrated by an electoral system that has failed to produce a new Government following elections in April and September.

After April’s fiasco – Trump opined:

“Well, it’s too bad what happened in Israel. It looked like a total win for Netanyahu, who’s a great guy, he’s a great guy,” said the president. “And now they’re back… in the election stage. That is too bad. Because they don’t need this. I mean they’ve got enough turmoil over there, it’s a tough place.”

That turmoil continued in September and could be repeated following any third election.

Trump’s deal of the century – years in the making and designed to end the 100 years Jewish-Arab conflict – will not be released until a new Israeli Government has been formed. 

Liberman’s failure to sign up his 8 seats with the 55 seats aligned with Netanyahu continues to confound the democratic electoral process – when a party not securing a majority of seats in its own right can usually form a Government with a small party’s support – in return for granting that small party some of its political demands. 

A full recount of the votes cast in the September 17 elections – if still legally available – could be just the miracle Israel needs to get out of its current predicament.

Clutching at straws maybe – but certainly well worth pursuing.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones” — one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

A Doctor Down Under on the Virus of Antisemitism

At an anti-Israel demo in Dusseldorf

Declares  Dr David Adler, chairman of the (politically incorrect, and all the better for that) Australian Jewish Association (AJA):

"It’s the world’s oldest bigotry and it’s on the rise again. Antisemitism is associated with the darkest chapters of human history when humanity abandons civilised moral codes. Societies and ideologies which embrace it typically suffer a major decline if not complete destruction. Examples span the latter years of the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, the suppression and pogroms of the old USSR, to the Nazi implemented Holocaust of the second world war....

Antisemitism in some ways has the characteristics of a virus which morphs. During the Inquisition it was hatred of the Jewish religion with forced conversions by torture. Under the USSR it was Jewish culture such as circumcision or teaching Torah which was banned. The Nazis took a racial approach with the objective to eliminate the Jewish race. In more recent years, it is hatred of the world’s only Jewish state, Israel, which has become the principal focus for antisemites. Yes, anti-Zionism is antisemitism."

And to combat this virulent virus in all its strains, clearly identified by Dr Adler in his diagnosis here, a strong antidote is required:

"All these components need to be vigorously called out and condemned. The most widely accepted definition of antisemitism is that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which includes working examples of what is unacceptable. Australia became a full member on 4 June 2019. At a minimum, all federal and state bodies, including schools and universities, should formally adopt the working definition of the IHRA. The Australian Jewish Association will be proposing that leadership commence with the federal parliament and we are asking the government to pass a resolution to that effect. While this does not solve antisemitism, it would be a powerful signal that Australia stands united against antisemitism".

Meanwhile, AJA director Michael Burd secured an exclusive and special interview/discussion with that supreme realist and staunch friend of Israel Colonel Richard Kemp.

As the AJA states: "Absolutely compelling listening ..." with one of the world's experts on such matters:  On AJA YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU5FhdxqXmc&t